Designs are based on M-drive maximum thrust 6 for >200t ships, central role of the battleship/dreadnought is to carry a heavy Meson Spinal weapon into combat ( >10DD ) with secondary batteries primarily anti-small craft / point defense while relying on escorts to combat ships <= 10,000t.

Screens top out at x60. (12DD ) and High Burn Thrusters require a cool down period equal to the number of turns used.

Battleships/Dreadnoughts being >100,000t in order to limit critical hits to large bays.
Heavy Cruisers being > 10,000t and topping out at 100,000t in order to limit crits to medium and heavy bays
Light Cruisers being between 5,000t -10,000t to ignore critical hits from turrets and barbettes.
Frigates <5,000t and >2,000t
Destroyers / Corvettes <2,000t

The laser turrets could use a tech upgrade, e.g. Long Range or Accurate.

The lasers are mainly for point defense purposes with a secondary purpose of engaging small craft at close / adjacent range.

The Particle Barbettes are the secondary system for engaging past close range.

Laser turrets are great multi-purpose tertiary armament. They are somewhat effective against everything, missiles, fighters, and other ships. The best way to kill fighters are at long range, before the ship gets negative modifiers for dogfight.

You have already invested in a lot of space and money in the turrets, a little extra will make them considerably more effective.

Combat Steps
When spacecraft fight, instead of one ship completing
all of its actions before you move onto the next, as
happens in combat between Travellers and vehicles, you
instead go through the following steps in every combat
round.
1. Manoeuvre Step: In order of initiative, each ship
manoeuvres based on its Thrust.
2. Attack Step: In order of initiative, each ship can
attack, using weapons or conducting boarding actions.
3. Actions Step: In order of initiative, ships can perform
other, miscellaneous actions, such as repairing damaged

Since certain steps don't require certain software it would be trivial to switch programs to active memory.

Reflec is good, but it is also very expensive.
Reinforced hull is good, but it is also expensive.

At this scale that would be pinching dimes to save pennies.

Reinforced hull allows increase to hull points without having to increase hull size and considering the number of components that use that value the reinforced hull's cost is very effective.

Also uses less materials allowing more hulls to be built.

Sure, but 60 screens prevents (with a good crew, on average): 60 × 4[effect] × 7[2D] ≈ 1680 damage points. Against a Meson spinal that inflicts on average 84000 damage, that is next to nothing.

The multiplier for destructive trait occurs after all roll modifiers which is where for every 5 screens applied during an Angle Screens Reaction 2d + Effect from gunners roll is removed from the damage roll.

Since certain steps don't require certain software it would be trivial to switch programs to active memory.

Yes, we have combat steps, but that does not mean that we can use different software loadouts in different steps. We are actually manoeuvring and attacking throughout the round, we are not manoeuvring for 2 min, then shooting for 2 min, and finally waiting politely while the enemy fires for 2 min.

Sure, but 60 screens prevents (with a good crew, on average): 60 × 4[effect] × 7[2D] ≈ 1680 damage points. Against a Meson spinal that inflicts on average 84000 damage, that is next to nothing.

The multiplier for destructive trait occurs after all roll modifiers which is where for every 5 screens applied during an Angle Screens Reaction 2d + Effect from gunners roll is removed from the damage roll.

No, screens do not remove damage dice from the attack, but they reduce damage after it is rolled.

The gunner must succeed at a Gunner (screen) check against an attack and, if successful, he will reduce the damage of the attack, after the armour has been accounted for, by the number of dice rolled by the screen

The screens roll their own roll and use the regular D = × 10, since they are not spinal mounts.

This discussion is classic Traveller ship design vs reality. Players try to always min-max their designs because they don't have to consider real world problems, like paying for ships over the long term, a shortage of hulls able to be deployed, etc, fighting with legislatures to pay for things that don't get used all that often (except when they need to be), etc.

In reality naval designers have to consider all kinds of things that players never do. Which is why, i think, the canon designs always seem so "boring" on paper if you compare them to the uber killer ships designed using the books.

. . .
In reality naval designers have to consider all kinds of things that players never do. Which is why, i think, the canon designs always seem so "boring" on paper if you compare them to the uber killer ships designed using the books.

This is a very good point. Another point is that a lot of canine designs are based on different rule sets -- classic Book 2, classic High Guard first edition (which was a very broken system), classic High Guard second edition, the classic ship supplement, Mega Traveller, etc. Yet another point is that the canon designs were written under publishing deadlines, and aren't necessarily all that well designed even according to the combination of rules and in-world economic considerations.

baithammer wrote: ↑
Which would be inconsistent with the modifiers in the design step as they are additive and not multiplicative, -10% for close hull and +50% for the reinforced hull so ending up as +40%.

Cost +50% = increase by 50% = multiply by 1.5
To imply additive percentages you would have to say "+50% of base cost".

baithammer wrote: ↑
As to the screens and going with d6*10 per 5 screens ends with a really bad return for defense.

Which still doesn't make up for the 100 times difference in scale considering the 1:1 screen is called out for ship scale and progresses linearly while the 1:5 destructive scale has a noticeable reduction in progression.

Different ends of the same scale, the battlecruisers were a contemporary of the armoured cruiser trying to increase main battery and speed at the cost of armour which didn't end well. Fast Battleships proved more effective than the battlecruisers.

Pocket Battleships were built as a hull closest to a battleship without tripping the treaties that were in place at the time. A much greater effort was made in the technology to make this design work.

For Fisher, they were the successors to first class armoured cruisers.

The Deutschlands were a solution to a German dilemma, the need to power project in the Baltic, and/or sockblock the French, while not appearing to defy the provisions of Versailles. The eleven inchers are at the low end of capital class guns, whereas nine point twos tended to be the prewar limitation for cruiser guns. You have a substantial secondary anti surface armament.